A flood of new arrivals after the traditional June sales should see sharp prices in the second half of the year.

Battle of the workhorses

If you’re planning to buy a new ute in the traditional end of financial year sales, it might pay to wait.

A multi-million dollar battle for market share is brewing, but it’s not likely to break out until after the usual June peak.

Commercial vehicle sales are typically strongest in the run to the end of the financial year.

But last year’s Thailand floods have hampered supply, with many big-selling utes missing the boat. Deliveries not expected to return to normal until July or August.

The recovery from the floods is almost complete, and most Thailand factories are working overtime to make up for lost sales.

The biggest challenger comes from an unlikely source.

Holden has told dealers it will spend $15 million on advertising its new Colorado – double what it spent when advertising the new “billion-dollar” Commodore in 2006.

Holden’s executive director of sales and marketing, John Elsworth, would not confirm the advertising spend on Colorado but told Drive: “I’m not going to comment on whether or not it’s more than [Commodore’s ad spend] but it’s an appropriate amount to promote the vehicle. We haven’t launched a new pick-up in more than 10 years.”

Holden dealers will be armed to the teeth with new Colorados to sell. The company told dealers it has ordered 18,000 Colorado utes for the last six months of this year – enough to almost match the sales rate of the top-selling Toyota HiLux.

“We have a lot of pre-ordered cars,” says Elsworth. “Our priority now is to get them into customers’ hands as quickly as possible.”

But market leader Toyota is also trying to make up for lost sales: its Thailand factory is literally working overtime to pump more HiLuxes into the Australian market.

“We have a lot of stock coming,” says Toyota Australia executive director of sales and marketing, Matthew Callachor. “We are back to full production, plus overtime.”

The HiLux – Australia’s top selling ute for the past 21 years in a row and the top-selling vehicle nationally last month – still has a comfortable sales lead, but faces its toughest battle yet.

The HiLux must compete with four all-new rivals from Ford, Mazda, Holden and Isuzu, plus a revitalised Volkswagen Amarok shortly available with automatic transmission.

“We never under-estimate our competition,” says Callachor. “But we’ve got a good order bank and we are a long way ahead [in sales so far this year]. I think it will be difficult to catch HiLux for overall leadership.”

Ford Australia says it is over the worst of its supply restrictions and will have Rangers arriving in significant numbers in July and August.

“We’re going to see strong production numbers on Ranger between now and the end of the year,” says Ford Australia spokesman Neil McDonald.

“We’ll be pushing them out the door. Every single month from now until the end of the year will be strong.”

But the Ranger’s twin under the skin, the Mazda BT-50, which is built on the same Thailand production line as the Ford, is still experiencing some delays while it waits for unique parts.

Mazda Australia spokesman Steve Maciver told Drive: “We are still not back at free supply. We’re not going to be dragged into any silly discounting or marketing ploys. We’ve got a lot of demand, we’re selling everything we get our hands on.”

Meanwhile the Holden Colorado’s twin under the skin, the jointly-developed Isuzu D-Max, is due to arrive in July.

The new D-Max has a bigger, 3.0-litre turbo diesel engine than the Holden Colorado – and will come with six airbags instead of the Colorado’s four.

But Isuzu Australia is not sure it will get enough vehicles to meet demand. The Thailand factory has 80,000 Isuzus on back order just for Thailand. And Isuzu has all but sold out of the old model in Australia, having posted its second best month on record in February.

Meanwhile other manufacturers who’ve not had interruptions to supply are getting in early. Mitsubishi is currently advertising sharp deals across the Triton range.

And supply of Nissan’s Navara has been largely unaffected as most models are sourced from Spain; only the most basic Navara pick-up comes from Thailand.

The likely casualties of the battle of the pick-ups are the car-derived Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon utes.

Sales of the Commodore ute are down 16 per cent year to date, while Ford Falcon ute sales are down 17 per cent.

Both locally-made utes are destined to record their worst sales results in more than 12 years.